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Jaina View of Life
a characteristic of the greater number of philosophers." Whitehead shows that reality can be best understood by the integral view-point in which the ultimate postulares of permanence and flux are harmoniously blended. Heraclitus emphasized the partial truth of change and flux. Perminedes presented permanence and being as the reality. Reality is to be found in the blending with the two view points into a comprehensive whole.
For Whitehead, coherence would mean that the fundamental ideas presuppose each other. In isolation they are meaningless. It does not mean they are definable in terms of each other, though they are relevant to each other. 'No entity' can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the universe, and that it is the business of speculative philosophy to exhibit this truth. This character is its coherence.49
He also says : "The systematisation of knowledge cannot be conducted in watertight compartments. All general truths condition each other; and the limits of their application cannot be adequately defined apart from their correlation by yet wider generalities."48
This is the attitude of the Jainas also. The Jaina emphasis on the material and spiritual as a synthesis of opposites leads to a concrete universal involving unity in diversity. It is comparable to Jasper's “unfanatical absoluteness'. Jainas in their theory of Anekānta illustrate a 'non-attachment of partial truths; and they have made creative use of the contradictions by removing the sting out of them, Heideggar presents a similar point of view.44
In our political life, Pancasila, as our late Prime Minister has pointed out, is the panacea for the ills of our present-day life. And Pancasila expresses the spirit of Anekānta.
41. Whitehead (A. N.); Process and Reality, Part II, Ch. X, Sect. I. 42. Whitehead (A. N.): Process and Reality (1929) Part 1, Ch. I, Sect. I. 43. Ibid. Sect. IV. 44. Marshall Margaret Wiley; Vis vabhārati Quarterly, Calcutta, Vol,
No. XXVIII-2, 1962-63, pp. 116-138,
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